In a network computing environment that includes nodes, an event, such as a disruption, can cause the state of one or more nodes to change. When such an event occurs, each node needs to ascertain whether the state of the nodes with which it was communicating has changed. This determination is necessary in order to reallocate resources that are attached to nodes that may no longer be operational after the event.
A node communicates with another node via logical paths, which are relationships established between logical images residing in each node. A logical image is a partition of a node that has the logical appearance of that node from the standpoint of network functionality. When one node determines the state of another node (i.e., the state of the logical images of another node), it acquires the status of the logical paths between their respective logical images.
Today, to determine the state of a node, each logical image within a node sends a “query” packet to each other node with which it was recently communicating. For networks such as a FICON-based network offered by International Business Machines Corporation of Armonk, N.Y., a node may have to send as many as 256 queries to a single node, since there may be up to 256 FICON logical images in the sending node. With potentially each node in the network sending this many queries, performance degradation could possibly occur after a disruption in a large network.
Thus, a need exists in the communications art for an enhanced ability for communicating state information between network nodes having multiple logical images.